Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley and two state lawmakers announced legislation Tuesday designed to encourage police agencies and crime labs to expedite the processing of rape kits, which preserve evidence of sexual assault.

The bill was prompted by severe statewide delays in the analysis of thousands of the kits, which have languished in police evidence lockers and understaffed crime labs, officials said at a news conference in Oakland.

The bill would urge police to submit rape kits to crime labs within five days and ask labs to process the evidence and create DNA profiles - which would be compared to state and national DNA databases - within 30 days.

Law enforcement agencies would be required to notify sexual assault victims if their rape kits aren't analyzed within those time limits.

"We are not going to tolerate having a backlog of which we don't even know the number yet statewide," said Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who introduced the bill. She said failing to test a rape kit was "a second assault on the victim, and it leaves potentially a perpetrator on the streets to be able to assault again. Not tolerable."

Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, a co-author of the bill, said, "It's an affront to our justice system and to these victims that the evidence is being left on the shelf."

A major factor in the backlog is the belief by many labs and police agencies that they only have to examine kits in which the attacker is unknown to the victim, O'Malley said. She said important evidence was being lost, as some rapists attack both acquaintances and strangers. Alameda County, she said, has about 1,900 untested rape kits.

Similar bills have been vetoed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gov. Jerry Brown because of cost concerns. The legislators said they hoped Brown would sign the bill into law given the improved economy. California and other states have received millions from the federal government to eliminate backlogs.

Attending the news conference was Heather Marlowe, 32, of San Francisco, who said she was drugged and raped during the Bay to Breakers event in San Francisco in 2010. She said her rape kit wasn't tested for more than two years.

"It is a secondary traumatization," she said, "because I felt at that moment, after such a horrible crime had happened, that I could look to the Police Department to provide me the safety and the necessary follow-up and a sense that I was being protected."